The haunting expression, seemingly full of agony, has earned this ancient Egyptian mummy the nickname “the screaming woman.” Recent analysis suggests that this shocking pose is indeed related to the cause of the woman’s death, believed to be a severe heart attack. However, other scientists are intrigued, suggesting that the scream may have emerged after the woman’s death.
With her head turned backward, mouth agape, and hollow eye sockets staring into the abyss, this mummy stands out as one of the eeriest you’ve ever seen.
A recent analysis of this 3,000-year-old mummy, conducted by Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and radiologist Sahar Saleem from Cairo University, concludes that the woman, a pharaoh’s princess, suddenly passed away from a severe heart attack, evidenced by signs of severe atherosclerosis in her coronary arteries. The cause of controversy is not her cause of death but rather her final resting pose.
Hawass told Egypt’s Ahram Online that the mummification process preserves the position of the individual at the time of death.
We won’t buy it, and the experts we’ve spoken to about this story won’t either. But let’s take a quick look at this eerie specimen before we delve into the debate.
Discovered in 1881 at the Royal Cachette of Deir El-Bahari in Luxor, Egypt, the mummy belonged to a royal figure from the 21st or 22nd dynasties, hidden by priests to protect from grave robbers. An inscription on the linen covering the mummy’s bed describes this woman as the “royal daughter, royal sister of Meret Amon,” which isn’t very helpful as many pharaoh princesses shared the same name. The true identity of the woman remains a mystery, so while she’s conventionally referred to as the “screaming woman mummy,” archaeologists call her the “Unnamed Woman A.”
Interestingly, the Royal Cachette also yielded another “screaming” mummy – a man identified as Pentawer, the son of King Ramses III. Pentawer was associated with the Harem Conspiracy, a plot to kill his father, but he was captured and forced to commit suicide by hanging. Unlike other mummies found at the site, Pentawer wasn’t mummified; instead, he was wrapped in sheepskin as punishment for his crimes.
On the other hand, the screaming woman mummy was wrapped in white linen and carefully mummified, according to Ahram Online. To determine the cause of death, Hawass and Saleem conducted CT scans, revealing evidence of severe atherosclerosis. The woman, believed to be around 60 years old, had plaque buildup in arteries across her body, including the neck, abdomen, pelvis, and lower limbs.
This isn’t entirely surprising as a 2013 Lancet study showed that 34% of mummies from this period, both in Egypt and elsewhere, had evidence of heart disease.
How did this ‘Screaming Mummy’ actually die? (Photo: Zahi Hawass)
However, the sudden death from a severe heart attack is less certain—especially when making a statement, as quoted in Ahram Online, that “the mummification process of ancient Egyptians preserved the position of the princess at the time of death.” This is a statement, as described in a post on Hawass’s website:
It seems that the “screaming woman” passed away suddenly in her current body position with her legs crossed. As a result, her head tilted to the right, and the jaw dropped. We speculate that the corpse of the “screaming woman” may not have been discovered until many hours later, enough time for rigor mortis to develop. Rigor mortis, the stiffness of muscles and joints after death, starts from a few minutes to several hours after death. The contracted muscles become rigid and unable to relax until the body begins to decompose.
We believe that the mummy makers might have mummified the contracted corpse of the “screaming woman” before it decayed or expanded. Therefore, the mummy makers could not close her mouth or lay the corpse back in the usual lying position, as is customary with other mummies, thus preserving her facial expression and position at the time of death. CT scan results show that the mummy makers did not remove the brain of the mummy; the dried brain is seen inside the cranial cavity shifted to the right due to the head’s tilt during post-mortem examination.
